Tuesday, 9 November 2010

Am I the only one around here who thinks it’s wrong that Ed Miliband and his partner have just given birth to a baby without being married?The news makes no mention of the fact that they are are unmarried nor that it might be morally wrong to give birth to children outside wedlock.I know of no Prime Ministers that fathered (or mothered) legitimate children without being married to their partner.Has this kind of behaviour now become acceptable?

I know it’s quite normal these days for the chavs to have children without giving a second thought to marrying the father of the child, but I would have thought that, even in this day and age, respectable members of the community would be trying to set a good example to the chavs and be married before embarking on having a family.Certainly most senior members of the three main political parties seem to subscribe to this view; I don’t recall Mr Cameron, Mr Blair, or Mr Brown, all of whom have recently had children, saying in any way shape or form that they thought it was a good idea to father children outside wedlock.Indeed, all three seem to be very happily married. What kind of message does Mr Miliband wish to convey to his new son?That it’s ok not to enter into a lifetime commitment with the boy’s mother – that it all might be a “here today gone tomorrow” arrangement?

I think it’s wrong and that we should campaign for Mr Miliband to take the logical, and, most would say, normal step of marrying his partner.Does the word "bastard" no longer carry any overtones? What do you think?

Tuesday, 17 August 2010

From a blogger called "The answer's 42" comes the following blog. Very interesting - makes some very valid points...

"One of the Labour leadership hopefuls, Andy Burnham, talks of returning the party to its "traditional" roots and is proud of his "working-class" background. Not surprising then that he's got the worst record of all the contenders when it comes to LGBT issues. "Working-class" people never used to be particularly tolerant of homosexuality; their men were men and their women were women.

But I'm not sure that the "working-class" that Andy claims to speak for exists any more. There are lots of manual workers, men and women, who earn considerably more than the down-trodden workers of the past. The most poorly paid are in the service industries, mainly women, earning the minimum wage. On sink estates around the country there are socially-deprived, poorly educated people who have little in common with working-class men like the ones featured in the recent BBC TV Fatherhood series. Many of them read to their children at night after work and encouraged them to pass their 11+ and better themselves. Pre-contraception and modern domestic appliances, mothers were still chained to the sink.

A few years ago I did a funeral for a man who'd been a civil engineer, at the top of his company, who'd worked on projects all round the world. His family told me that when he was a child in the 1930s his family was so poor that he and his brother shared a pair of shoes and took it in turns to go to school in them. His family didn't want me to mention this at first. They were embarrassed about his early poverty. I pointed out that his story was inspirational. His family couldn't afford to keep him at school so he'd left early and gone to work. He got an apprenticeship and went to evenings classes to gain additional qualifications, got a job in civil engineering and worked his way up from the bottom. It wasn't unusual for children to share shoes when he was a child. It is unusual to hear about people who've made such progress now. When he grew up, his children were used to all the privileges their father had earned, and all went to university. They had working class roots, but had never known working class life.

Now, if welfare benefits are properly managed, no one needs to go without shoes. Many of the socially-deprived have all sorts of problems. Many don't aspire to improve themselves by educating themselves; they just resent all the people who have more than they do. Are they "working-class"?

Then there's the "middle-class" that the Labour Party's fought so hard to attract and keep over the last decade or so. They read the Guardian and the Independent, have several cars, own their own homes, send their kids to the "best" schools, drink wine most days of the week, have foreign holidays, and fret about things like "fulfilment".

The "upper-class" used to mean people with inherited wealth; aristocrats or those on the fringes of the aristocracy. Now there's a new layer of wealthiness; people paid silly money as top executives, celebrities who are famous for being famous, and other millionaires (a million doesn't go far these days).

My dad was a book-keeper. He aspired to be middle class but was never well paid and lived in rented accommodation most of his adult life. I remember the Christmas he came home with tears in his eyes after accidentally breaking a bottle of whisky by knocking it against a lamp post as he got out of a car, having been given a lift by a colleague (he didn't have a car). He'd bought it with a discount from work, and he watched it all drain away. On a tight budget, it wasn't something he could replace easily.

I was the first in my family to have a higher education, though I didn't get any encouragement from my parents. They wanted me to stay out of trouble and get married. I did neither. What with one thing and another, I've hardly had any money for most of my adult life, though I've worked in one of the so-called "professions". So what class do I belong to? Hard to say, so I don't. I don't have one.

Thursday, 15 April 2010

Well it had to come about - my controversial blog. I can't stand all this stuff where we're all lovey dovey all the time, and there's nothing wrong, and everything in the garden's rosy. I for one, have strong views about certain things, and those things include speed cameras. I hate them - why do they exist?Up till 2003 I had a clean licence - 21 years of unfettered and pleasant driving. Round about that time speed cameras started to pop up everywhere, and i mean everywhere. So, all of a sudden I had 6 points (got caught twice in five months) - for the non-Brits amongst you, thats half-way towards losing your drivers licence, which is a big, big deal.

So, my question is why? Why so many cameras? Are they serving any useful purpose?And my answer - no, I don't believe that they are.Lets look at some hard facts - in 1964, the year before they introduced a speed limit on the motorways, there were 17 deaths per day on average on the UK roads. Motorway speed limits were introduced in 1965 because people were using them as race tracks and subsequently killing themselves in large numbers. Cars at the time were not designed to stand up to any sudden impacts, and would literally impale the popor luckless victim inside, as they were full of sharp pointed, non cushioned items.

As we all know, cars have improved immeasurably since those heady days - they contain seat-belts, air bags, cushioned driver areas, soft steering wheels, etc etc. Have we seen an increase in the motorway speed laws to take account of these vast improvements in car technology. No we have not.And what about the current death rate? Well, for 2004 (the last year for which I can find figures) the death rate was 3280, or 9 per day. 9 per day!! So despite the fact that roads are now 4 times as densely populated as they were in the mid 60s we have reduced the death rate by almost half!!Has this had anything to do with speed cameras? No - this figure of 9 per day has been roughly constant since 1999, so - more speed cameras - no change to loss of life.

Ok, so far so good, nothing particularly controversial in the preceding facts - anyone could dig them out after half an hour on google. The more controversial bit is - 9 deaths a day on UK roads is not a bad thing - in fact its a good thing!! How can that be, i hear you cry - well, 9 deaths a day is the lowest per capita figure in the whole of Europe - therefore our streets are already safer than the streets of France, Germany, Italy etc, etc.But, more importantly than that is Darwins theory. Ever since Darwin propounded his theory (that of natural selection) we humans have done our level best to ignore it. How? We don't just let the fittest survive, as Darwin suggested, we let everyone survive, the fittest, the not so fit, and the pretty bloody unfit as far as I can see. How will this state of things help the human race? Well it won't, we are not keeping the best, for future generations, we're keeping everything!!!!

We have no natural predators left in the UK. All the wolves, brown bears, scorpions and alligators have been ruthlessly destroyed or driven away. Therefore unlike other primates, there is nothing here to keep down our numbers.Enter the car - it is perfect for the role - it is indiscriminate - it is loved by the population as a whole, and it is a killing machine. However it can't kill, if it is never allowed to drive above 30mph anywhere, because the nanny state is watching it all the time.So, my advice - cancel speed limits, make every road a free for all - lets see if we can bring a little bit of death back to the road - and at the same time - have some more enjoyable motoring without having to constantly watch out for those fucking speed cameras!!

Population growth..that's what scares me...this is not a joke, just somefacts I picked up from from wikipedia

The world population is the total number of humans alive on the planetEarth at a given time. According to estimates published by the UnitedStates Census Bureau, the Earth's population hit 6.5 billion onSaturday, February 25, 2006. In line with population projections, thisfigure continues to grow at rates that are unprecedented prior to the 20thcentury. Approximately one fifth of all humans that have existed in thelast six thousand years are currently alive. By some estimates, there arenow one billion (thousand million) young people in the world between theages of fifteen and twenty-four.

(This incidently, means, that there are more people currently alive on theplanet, than the total of everyone who has died....! How freaky is that!This puts paid to the reincarnation theory for me..)

The last 70 years of the 20th century saw the biggest increase in theworld's population in human history. The following table shows when eachbillion milestone was met: 1 billion was reached in 1802. 2 billion was reached 125 years later in 1927. 3 billion was reached 34 years later in 1961. 4 billion was reached 13 years later in 1974. 5 billion was reached 13 years later in 1987. 6 billion was reached 12 years later in 1999.From the figures above, the world's population has tripled in 72 years,and doubled in 38 years up to the year of 1999.

So in other words, it took 50,000 years for the population to grow fromsay 0 to 1 billion. Then it only took 125 years to go from 1 to 2billion, and so on and so on. This despite the fact that that the 20thcentury was the bloodiest ever in terms of death by other than naturalcauses.WW1 killed approx 22 millionthe great flu epidemic killed 25 millionWW2 killed approx 20 millionStalin killed over 30 million peasants between 1939 and 1955It is alleged that Mao Tse tung caused the premature deaths of over 70million Chinese between 1950 and 1976.

So. what would've happened if all these people had not died prematurely????

There have been no massive disasters on this scale since the late 60s.Nothing has happened to significantly reduce the world population, apartfrom new "1 child laws" in China, and enforced vasectomies in India.

What does the future hold????If we look at Darwinian theory - it says that any population will onlyincrease whilst there are abundant resources, as soon as the populationoutstrips the resources, then massive cutbacks in population areinevetable.I think this will happen, not in 1000 years time nor 100 years time. Ithink this will happen in our kids' lifetime!!! Scary.....

Wednesday, 10 February 2010

Went on the London Eye at the weekend. An amazing experience, slightly tempered by the fact that it cost £16 per person! I'm not so old that I can't remember when you could buy a slap up meal for four for that price. Anyway, here are the pictures - make your own mind up...

Thursday, 4 February 2010

Listening to PM tonight I heard an interesting story. Apparently, Cherie Blair kept a violent man out of prison because he is 'religious'.

Shamso Miah, 25, broke another customer's jaw during the violent 'queue rage' attack after a row erupted about who was next in line. Miah, a devout Muslim, had just left his local mosque when he became enraged and grabbed victim Mohammed Furcan before punching him. The Miah ran outside but Furcan chased after him and demanded to know why he had been struck. The pious Miah then punched him again, connecting with the right side of his face and causing him to collapse to the ground in East Ham. His car number plate was reported to the police and, when arrested, he claimed he had acted in self defence.

But the court heard the bank's CCTV footage showed he was the aggressor. Miah pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm. Blair, or Booth as she likes to be known, summed up thus 'I am going to suspend this sentence for the period of two years based on the fact you are a religious person and have not been in trouble before. 'You caused a mild fracture to the jaw of a member of the public standing in a queue at Lloyds Bank. 'You are a religious man and you know this is not acceptable behaviour.'

Excuse me? What has religion got to do with it? Ann Atkins (barf) was wheeled in as the rent-a-quote for this piece and she stated that religious people, particularly Christians, are more moral and better than non-religious people. Really? That's news to me. As far as I know religion usually makes good people do bad things, it certainly doesn't make them better moral agents. A representative from the secular society said much the same and made Atkins look like the fool she is.

Blair/Booth's message is quite clear if you're religious that makes it alright. Does it not follow from this judgement that all religious people, who are found guilty of assault and occasioning actual bodily harm, should be released because they know above all others that bashing people about is not acceptable behaviour?

Miah was sentenced to six months in jail, suspended for two years, and was ordered to carry out 200 hours of community service.

Listening to PM tonight I heard an interesting story. Apparently, Cherie Blair kept a violent man out of prison because he is 'religious'.Shamso Miah, 25, broke another customer's jaw during the violent 'queue rage' attack after a row erupted about who was next in line. Miah, a devout Muslim, had just left his local mosque when he became enraged and grabbed victim Mohammed Furcan before punching him. The Miah ran outside but Furcan chased after him and demanded to know why he had been struck. The pious Miah then punched him again, connecting with the right side of his face and causing him to collapse to the ground in East Ham. His car number plate was reported to the police and, when arrested, he claimed he had acted in self defence.But the court heard the bank's CCTV footage showed he was the aggressor. Miah pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm. Blair, or Booth as she likes to be known, summed up thus 'I am going to suspend this sentence for the period of two years based on the fact you are a religious person and have not been in trouble before. 'You caused a mild fracture to the jaw of a member of the public standing in a queue at Lloyds Bank. 'You are a religious man and you know this is not acceptable behaviour.'Excuse me? What has religion got to do with it? Ann Atkins (barf) was wheeled in as the rent-a-quote for this piece and she stated that religious people, particularly Christians, are more moral and better than non-religious people. Really? That's news to me. As far as I know religion usually makes good people do bad things, it certainly doesn't make them better moral agents. A representative from the secular society said much the same and made Atkins look like the fool she is.Blair/Booth's message is quite clear if you're religious that makes it alright. Does it not follow from this judgement that all religious people, who are found guilty of assault and occasioning actual bodily harm, should be released because they know above all others that bashing people about is not acceptable behaviour?Miah was sentenced to six months in jail, suspended for two years, and was ordered to carry out 200 hours of community service.

Tuesday, 26 January 2010

WTF was Charlene on about ?????Current mood: mischievous Category: Music

I've just been listening to Charlene's - I've Never Been To Me" played on the radio - for the younger ones among you, Charlene got to number one in June 1982 with this amusing little ballad.

However the lyrics were weird to say the least, and one particular line has always foxed me.

Halfway through the song Charlene sings

"I've been undressed by KingsAnd I've seen some thingsThat a woman ain't s'posed to see"

Well, what kind of things would that be then? I've puzzled over this for many years - did she mean something like the internal workings of the combustion engine (hey - sexist, i can hear you all shouting) or did she mean something completely different, like the ugly backside of her man 1st thing in the morning....

Just what exactly are things that a woman ain't supposed to see?I'd welcome your comments...all of you....

Wednesday, 20 January 2010

In 1969 my father arrived home from work and announced that we were to become the proud owners of the "Encyclopedia Brittanica", a compendium of encyclopedias issued monthly, building up into a complete set from A to Z over a period of (wait for it) ten, yes ten years!A total therefore of 120 volumes, starting with "A" – the indefinite article, and ending presumably, with some obscure word starting with "z".My brother and I loved these volumes of encyclopedias; they were colourful, packed with illustrations and full of useful information about such things as aardvarks, abacuses and Isaac Asimov.

As you can probably guess from the examples above, Dad never completed his marathon purchase.These books cost over 15/- each, therefore a complete set would have cost over £90.00, a considerable sum of money in those days.Mum became pregnant with my younger sister in 1970 causing all such encyclopedic purchases to be cancelled.Never mind, at least we had an encyclopediagoing as far as "Bell, Alexander Graham (1847-1922)".

However, even at the tender age of ten, I could see problems with this method of supplying and storing information.During the period when the books were arriving every month, man (allegedly) landed on the moon.However the encyclopedias did not refer to this momentous fact, only going as far as "Apollo 10" which, of course was the precursor to the famous Apollo 11.Given that the vendors of Encyclopedia Britanica insisted that once you collected the set, this was the only compendium of encyclopedias you would ever need in your lifetime, it occurred to me that there were serious flaws in their argument.

Of course! It was "static" information – as new inventions occurred, they were not represented in the compendium.There would have been no mention of compact discs, mobile phones or even hand held calculators in these books, no matter how many times you read them.

In 1995 Microsoft introduced "Encarta", a brilliant new invention with the entire sum of all human knowledge, all on one CD.It was easily accessible, showed moving pictures and contained sound – a big step up from all previous encyclopedias.(or should that be encyclopediae?)It was also copyable, so as long as one of your mates bought a copy every year, you could always obtain a free update.However, it was still over £30 and was still out of date, as soon as it arrived on the shelves.Someone famous, somewhere would inadvertantly die just after the cd came out, making it out of date.

What's the solution?I love encyclopedias, I love having instant access to knowledge and information.Who designed The Millau Bridge? What year was Albert Einstein born? Who starred in "Love Story"?What is a Perfect Number (no it's not the same as a prime number).

The answer of course, lay in the internet.In 2001Wikipedia was launched, a global, non profit making, online encyclopedia, written by the people for the people.And most importantly, it was FREE!It is the third most accessed website after social networking sites and ebay.Everything is there; if it is suitable for inclusion in an encyclopedia it is included on Wikipedia.It includes pictures and links to other websites that can further your knowledge if you need to know more.It is instantly accessible, just by typing into the search term box. The total sum of all human information is there, and it is updated all the time, every second of every day.The information you read is as up-to-date as any peer-reviewed information in the world.It truly is an amazing and wondrous resource.It was started by a group of academics led by Jimmy Wales and others and everyone is invited to contribute provided that their contributions are a) accurate and b) not controversial.

As an example, it was announced on the news on Radio 2 at 8am this morning (20th January) that the famous American author, screenwriter and educator Erich Segal (he wrote Love Story among other things) had died the night before.By the time I had typed his name into Wikipedia, at 8.30 am this morning, it read

Death

Segal died from a heart attack on January 17, 2010[2] and was buried in London. In a eulogy delivered at his funeral, his daughter Francesca said, "That he fought to breathe, fought to live, every second of the last 30 years of illness with such mind-blowing obduracy, is a testament to the core of who he was -- a blind obsessionality that saw him pursue his teaching, his writing, his running and my mother, with just the same tenacity. He was the most dogged man any of us will ever know."[3]

What more can I say – it is the absolute ultimate encyclopedia.Wikipedia is one reason why I sincerely believe that the internet is only the third great invention of mankind since the dawn of time, (the other two being control of fire, and the wheel).Wikipedia is the supreme example of how human knowledge can be pooled and shared by all and for all.

Thursday, 14 January 2010

Let me explain my reasons for why I think Margaret Thatcher is behind the current economic problems that we find ourselves in. Don’t get me wrong – Thatcher did a lot of good things for the economy, she took on the trade unions and won, a victory that was wholly necessary to be able to move our economy forward. We had gone far too far in the opposite direction over the previous 10 years.

She also had the guts to face up to the IRA and allowed Bobby Sands to die of hunger strike in the Maze prison, a policy that I wholeheartedlyapplauded.....

However she also introduced us to the new “Greed is good” philosophy, and famously once said “There is no such thing as society” when it is blatantly obvious that there is such a thing as society and its function governs our lives and well-being.

Thatcher believed that certain industries (especially banking) functioned better in a de-regulated environment.Prior to hertaking power, banks were strictly regulated in their ability to borrow andcreate capital.By the time she departed in 1990, banks were practically unregulated and were allowed to borrow up to 10times their liquidity ratio.

In addition, she opposed the general consensus of “mutuality”, a status that had created building societies and had prospered since the mid 1700’s.Mutuality meant that building societies functioned by offering decent saving rates to savers, and affordable mortgagesto borrowers, making a profit out of the difference between the two rates.There were strict regulations coveringthe amount that building societies could raise on the inter-bank markets, and their mutuality ensured that they were not chasing short-term profits to satisfy the stock market, as they were owned by their members (essentially the savers and borrowers) and any profits were returned to their members.

Thatcher passed legislation allowing these building societies to “demutualise” and offer themselves for sale on the stock market.This was a fatal step and led ultimately to the collapse of NorthernRock in 2007.Most building societies followed this route since it made the existing board directors extremely rich, and there was no short-term downside.Unfortunately the long term downside was that these newly privatised building societies (Abbey National, Halifax, Alliance and Leicester,Woolwich, etc) were now owned by institutional shareholders through stock market flotation and were now driven to consistently show short term profits.Those that stayed mutual (Nationwide, for example) were not in this boat and did not have to strive for continuous short term profits.

Those that did were subject to takeover (Woolwich, Cheltenham & Gloucester) and fought viciously between themselves to take a larger slice of the mortgage market.This led to a decline in the traditionalstandards required of borrowers before they were prepared to grant loans.Whilst mutuals could and would only offer three times annual earnings as a maximum mortgage, “demutuals” would offerseven or even eight times annual earnings in order to lend larger sums and generate larger profits.It also led to demutuals lending sometimes more than 100% of the house value, something that mutuals would never do, primarily because mutuals practised fiscal probity, andhad to raise capital from their savers.

The results?Well we see them all now – a massive increase inhouse-prices, caused by the demutualised building societies extravagant lending policies, and the resulting credit crunch when it was discovered that many British building societies/banks had bought large slabs of sub-prime lending from US wholesale banks and did not have any capital assets in their balance sheets to be able to trade out of this mess.

This indeed is Thatcher’s legacy – her policy of unrestrained “greed is good” deregulation of the banking industry has led directly to the current crisis.If you are in any doubt, go and look up “derivatives” on wikipedia.

What’s needed now is nationalisation where necessary and a return to mutuality where such a route is possible.Banks should never again be able to trade without regulations.